Visual Discursivity and Graphic Enunciation in Documentary Comics: a look upon Le Photographe, by Guibert, Lefèvre and Lemercier

Visual Discursivity and Graphic Enunciation in Documentary Comics: a look
upon Le Photographe, by Guibert, Lefèvre and Lemercier
Benjamim Picado
Departament de Media and Cultural Studies
Universidade Federal Fluminense

0. prologue

I propose an examination of a segment of graphic narratives
presenting major problems for the evaluation of visual documentary's
discursive practices and regimes of narrative enunciation: in such a
context, I choose the collective work Le Photographe, by (GUIBERT, LEFÈVRE
and LEMERCIER, 2009). This particular album is situated in a borderline
between documentary recording and journalistic testimony, incorporating the
art of comics to a critical self-reflection on the cultural place of these
discursive practices of a privileged mediation of historical actuality and
eventfulness (a subject I also explore in my researches about
photojournalism, for instance).
Being a graphic novel in which authorship is negotiated among three
artistic positions (photographer, artist and book designer), it results in
the most interesting effects for the consolidation of such "actantial
positions" of narrative mediation. Accordingly, Le Photographe not only
reflects three distinct discursive and authorial perspectives, but also a
sharing of resources and expressive means used in the consolidation of
certain testimonial effects of narration – especially in the emotional
impacts it will generate in its readership.
I shall develop the problem of the functions fulfilled by the schemes
of "graphiation" (MARION,1993) that are updated by the combination of
design, photography and visual composition: this graphic enunciation works
in terms of establishing the enunciative positioning implied by the roles
ascribed to drawing, photography and graphic design, and also in the
fixation of the action schemes comprising the adventures of the
photographic mission with the team of Doctors Without Borders (summary).
Both aspects of "graphiation" imply functions of narrative
discursivity (as relative to authorial and stylistic variables of artistic
utterance) and the pragmatic dimension of the mediations of social and
historical realities (as regards to the interactions between artworks and
implied readership).

1. "graphation" and effects of eyewitness in "documentary comics"

In graphic narratives, it's fair enough to say that the theoretical
question of enunciative regimes is quite embryonic, with a tendency to
assimilate the discursive acts of graphic narratives to the set of devices
through which stories are presented: just as in film analysis, in which
functionality of narrative utterances are defined by acts of "showing" and
not by those of "telling" (GAUDREAULT and JOST, 1990), the application of
narratological precepts to graphic universes lends some specificity to
particular devices of comics, in regards to its very modes of uttering
narrative situations.
However, there is one special aspect differentiating the art of comics
and which is not properly defined by particularities of media devices of
graphic narratives: this aspect of narrative enunciation in comics is only
revealed in the interactions promoted between graphic formats and its
potential readership. Philippe Marion's concept of "graphiation" comes in
handy, in such a context: it implies a critical appreciation of the
stylistic aspects making up the arts of drawing and graphic design, both
defined as "traces" or "indexes" of a discursive singularity through which
stories are told.
These regimes of "graphiation" are pivotal elements of Le Photographe,
particularly on the interactions promoted through resources of graphic
utterances between the discursive positioning of narration (the admission
of a subjective instance of narrative utterance) and the modes of
recognition by acts of reading (especially in its application to
"documentary comics"). For instance, it is something manifested in the
artistic unity of the album format, characterized by a singular
appreciation of the integration between the sequential drawings by Emmanuel
Guibert and the photographic contact sheets, originated from the field work
of photographer Didier Lefèvre.
First of all, this correlation between two distinct significant
materials is responsible for establishing certain effects of the story's
discursive drive, a trait pointing to the precise object of my examination:
in such "graphiation" established by the linkage between drawings and
photography (all managed through the mediation of the page's graphic
design), I highlight those aspects guiding the story's discursive
conduction in which the acts of reading imply the recognition of a
journalistic/documentary ethos of enunciation - mainly ascribed to the
testimonial genres of historical recordings.
That graphic organization permeating the game-like relationships
between drawing and photography is characterized by an iterative
oscillation between these materials, indicating an equal alternation of the
narrative regimes of "focalization": in general, this fluctuation between
discursive perspectives of storytelling attaches a more "externalized"
position to the drawing, whereas photographic formats are reserved to
fulfil roles predominantly associated with "internal focalization"; this is
particularly explicit in the ways the photographer is displayed in drawing,
as always accompanied by a recitative (representing his own voice),
expressing his questionings about the journey of the medical staff and
referring to their responses to his acts of shooting them – ultimately
followed by the result of this operation, in the form of a photographic
record (fig. 1):

Another instance of this iterative functionality between drawing and
photography is the one in which the intense interactions between
photographer and his subjects play a central role with regards to the
overall meaning of the story: these are contexts in which Lefèvre is
involved as a mediator of all things considered as important for his
recordings of the medical mission. These are resources characteristically
employed in the early stages of the story, when the photographer is still
searching a best position regarding the set of factors involving the
registering of the team at work (Figs. 2 and 3); it eventually resurfaces
as a narrative ethos in those calmer situations of the mission's adventures
- when the photographer can take a more contemplative attitude in relation
to spaces or the individuals with which he interacts (Fig. 4).

2. graphiation and narrative ordering of eventfulness in "documentary
comics"

In Le Photographe, a good portion of the contact sheets represent
situations of a far less sensational character than those in which single
snapshots traditionally synthesize a whole dynamic eventfulness (as in
canonical photojournalism): in such episodes, it is clear that a less
intense or synthetic character of the eventful sequences is a trademark of
the use of photographic resources.
Of such a kind are the events of the working routines of the medical
mission: we witness the doctors in moments prior to the start of their
trip, when the team hosts the materials for the journey, employing a proper
a discipline to it (Fig. 5); or also when we follow the action of local
helpers trying to accommodate the animals that will carry most of the load
of the mission, in carts to be taken to a checkpoint near the Pakistani
border (Fig. 6 e 7); and finally when the photographer observes Juliette,
one of the leading medical members of the entourage, on a morning care with
her own appearance, arranging the hair, just before the resumption of the
travel (Fig. 8).
From a proper narratological perspective, these are moments of a less
dramatic intensity, usually serving (at least in the canonical context of
fictional narratives) to condition the behaviour of narrative agents to its
precise motivation in many of its aspects. For instance, Barthes designated
this segment of narrative functions as "catalysis", characterizing them by
their apparent insignificance with respect to other story's segments in
which certain situations were properly resolved or completed - those being
defined as "nucleum" of narrative actions (BARTHES, 1966).
In such episodes of Le Photographe we sense the graphic organization
of events accusing a stronger testimonial mediation, something that lends
the journalistic discourse of the graphic novel its continuity with
contemporary documentary formats, especially in contemporary documentary
film. Instances of that sort are those when the medical mission coming to a
small Afghan village, are called up to help an old woman diagnosed with a
tumor in her right foot. The photographic approach to the action that
doctors trigger to remove this cancer combines aspects of a regard more
guided by the sense of photojournalistic "shock", but also combined with a
sense of "displacement", proper to visual documentary (Fig. 9).
Another aspect of this detachment of visual attention on the actions
of the medical mission is particularly noticeable in the ways the
photographer is shown as sensitive to what is happening around the team's
movements and adventures, and what makes up the routine of a war-torn
country, which passes laterally by the route that the mission does through
Afghanistan. With some frequency, this photographic presence - displaying
certain contexts a more everyday action - is employed to confront us with
all those creatures affected by war, fleeing to other corners of the
country, literally passing through the medical mission, always in the
opposite direction of its route (Fig. 10). Or, when the stunning scenery of
any part of Afghanistan is what stands out for the photographic eye, even
when parts of crossing over these segments imply all sorts of risks to the
whole staff - due to the fact that they are made during the day in
conflicted areas between Afghan and Russian forces, always under the strict
surveillance of snipers from both sides (Fig. 11).
One aspect to highlight about this discursive organization in which Le
Photographe becomes recognizable as a work of "documentary comics" is
precisely what arises from the use of these visual and graphic elements.
They imply not only new resources and constituent devices of documentary
practices in contemporary culture, but also the ethical horizon of such
discursive practices by means of the visual image. The "graphiation" that
crosses through drawing, photographic and graphic organization in Le
Photographe present us with important issues for a reflection on the visual
discourses inscribed in processes of historical mediation through
depiction, particularly replacing the ethical meaningfulness of these
different utterances for the importance attached to a certain pre-
judgmental distance of these discursive exercises - especially in the face
of social, historical, geographical and human singularities that are
graphically presented in the adventurous contexts of this medical mission
in Afghanistan.